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NASA Audio File

With a loud roar and a mighty column of flame, NASA and ATK successfully completed a two-minute, full-scale test of the largest and most powerful solid rocket motor designed for flight on August 31. The stationary firing of the five-segment solid motor known as Development Motor 2, took place at ATK's test facility in Promontory, Utah. All test objectives were met. Prior to testing, the motor was cooled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit for this to verify the performance of new materials. After more testing, the first-stage solid rocket motor will be certified to fly at temperature ranges between 40-90 degrees Fahrenheit. DM-2 is the most heavily instrumented solid rocket motor in NASA history with 53 test objectives measured through more than 760 instruments. The motor was built as an element of NASA's Constellation Program and is potentially transferable to future heavy-lift launch vehicle designs.

Cut 1 - 00:11 - “There’s nothing better for an engineer than to see an amazing test like this. It’s the culmination of a lot of good design work, a lot of dedication by an excellent team.” › Play Now

Alex Priskos, Manager, Ares First Stage, NASA Marshall

Cut 2 - 00:09 - “We captured all of the data we were after, and we are looking very much forward to being to further assess it.”› Play Now

Charlie Precourt, Vice President & General Manager, ATK

Cut 3 - 00:26 - “My hats off also to the ATK, NASA team that has pulled this off and put it together, because they have leveraged a lot of great experience from the past, they’ve maintained great discipline in engineering approaches, made great decisions along the way. The results you see today don’t come overnight and doesn’t come from doing it the first time around. So the critical skills in the workforce are what we have been focused on, and they showed themselves in spades today.”› Play Now